Real-Life fairy tale,set to old tunes

I know what I do. I play guitar,and in my category Im doing OK, said Rodriguez who turned 70 this month.

Its a real-life tale of talent disregarded,bad luck and missed opportunities,with an improbable stop in the Hamptons and a Hollywood conclusion: A singer-songwriter is signed to a contract in the late 1960s after producers with ties to Motown Records see him playing in a smoky Detroit nightclub called the Sewer. He makes a pair of albums that sell almost nothing and then drops out of sight. So why,40 years later,would anyone feel compelled to make a movie about this obscure artist,known professionally as Rodriguez?

Because,as it turns out,on the other side of the globe,in South Africa,Rodriguez had become as popular as the

Rolling Stones or Elvis Presley. But he never knew of that success. He never saw a penny in royalties from it,and he spent decades doing manual labour to make ends meet and raise his three daughters. It wasnt until fans in South Africa,trying to verify rumours he was dead,tracked him down through the Internet and brought him there to perform to adoring multitudes,that his career was resuscitated.

This was the greatest,the most amazing,true story Id ever heard,an almost archetypal fairy tale, said Malik Bendjelloul,the Swedish director of Searching for Sugar Man,a documentary.

Story continues below this ad

Because of an odd confluence of circumstances it is also a story unlikely ever to occur again. In the era before the World Wide Web,South Africans,living under apartheid and isolated from the main currents of pop culture by domestic censorship and international sanctions,had no idea that Rodriguez languished in anonymity elsewhere.

Searching for Sugar Man takes its title from Sugar Man,a bleak portrait of a drug dealer and his clients that is the first track on Rodriguezs debut album,Cold Fact,released in March 1970.

Bendjelloul,34,the son of an Algerian doctor and a Swedish painter decided to plunge ahead on a course that for a while seemed as doomed as his subjects career. There was,for example,the challenge of gaining the cooperation of Rodriguez,who is very private and had to force himself to do this, he said.

I was sceptical about the whole idea of my being in a film, Rodriguez (his full name is Sixto Rodriguez),said in an interview this month,a day after Searching for Sugar Man was screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Im not a visual guy. Im audio. Im a musician.I know what I do. I play guitar,and in my category Im doing OK, said Rodriguez who turned 70 this month.

Story continues below this ad

After his recording career collapsed,in 1972,Rodriguez,whose live performances were hampered by his habit of playing with his back to the audience,took construction jobs,demolishing and renovating houses and living modestly. In both the film and in person he seems remarkably serene about the opportunities he lost and the difficulties he had to endure.

Thanks to the buzz generated by the awards that Searching for Sugar Man,has won on the festival circuit,and especially the extraordinarily emotional response of audiences,Rodriguez now finds his American career fully revived. He is scheduled to embark on his first national tour this summer.